Early electric car project ran out of gas

The car of tomorrow was first produced in Bloomington in 1959. That's when a rechargeable electric car called the Henney Kilowatt was developed by a Bloomington-based vacuum cleaner company.

By Steve Tarter

The car of tomorrow was first produced in Bloomington in 1959.

That's when a rechargeable electric car called the Henney Kilowatt was developed by a Bloomington-based vacuum cleaner company.

C. Russell Feldman, chairman of the Eureka-Williams Co. and the man credited with putting radios in cars in 1928, wanted to make an electric car for utility company employees. B.L. England, chairman of the New Jersey-based National Union Electric Corp., backed the concept.

Using the body of the inexpensive Renault Dauphine, a French sedan, the Henney Kilowatt was billed as "the ultimate achievement of advanced electrical engineering and compact automotive design" in an advertising flyer.

"Eureka Williams is urging utilities to jump into the electric car market. Not by promoting alone, though. Also by buying cars for their fleets," noted a 1960 edition of Electric Merchandising Week.

But very few utilities jumped as the Bloomington auto effort faded in the face of competition from gas-powered vehicles that ran on inexpensive fuel.

In 1959, a new car that ran on gas could be purchased for $1,600, less than half of the Henney Kilowatt's $3,500 price tag. A gallon of gasoline cost just 28 cents at that time.

Now in the era of $4 gas, major automakers race to get alternative-energy models on the street. High hopes are pinned on plug-in hybrids, cars that possess a small gas engine with an electric motor that can be recharged overnight.

While the Henney Kilowatt may have been ahead of its time, it didn't make Bloomington the electric-car capital of the country. In fact, 65 of the 100 Henneys produced remained unsold in a warehouse years later, said Ed Schott, an electrical engineer who worked for the Eureka company at the time.

"Feldman wanted to stay in the automotive business so he suggested that we build an electric car. We said, 'who's going to buy them?' Nobody had heard of global warming back then," he said.

Schott, 71, later moved to Rockford, where he maintains a collection of antique cars and tractors that includes two Henney Kilowatts. "I had three at one time but sold one," he said.

The Henney - with its 12 batteries weighing 60 pounds apiece - has a range of about 80 miles before needing a charge, said Schott, recalling a 70-mile roundtrip he made without trouble.

"The Henney could reach a high speed of 45 or 50 miles an hour, less than that on a hill," he said.

Although he doesn't drive his Henney much these days, Schott looks for electric cars to make a comeback. "I think you'll see more plug-in (hybrids) on the road," he said.

Agreeing with that prediction is Mil Ovan, co-founder of Firefly Energy Co., the Peoria firm that looks to soon launch a lightweight truck battery while developing plans for its own high-tech, hybrid-vehicle battery.

"Some forecasters say that hybrids will make up 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. market by 2015," said Ovan.